1000 Tiny Birds: 2026 edition

Douglas Coupland - Binge (2021)

2026-01-08

At one point for my late teens/early 20s, I’d have probably told you that Douglas Coupland was my favourite author - oh for the days of certainty! This didn’t change out of any particular personal growth (mine) or creative decline (his), more just he stopped publishing as much. But picking up this post-covid collection of microfiction, I’m instantly reminded of what I loved about his work. It’s a generational voice that works when stretched above and below that generation, consistent across these 60 bite-sized stories that quantum leap from character to character, but still different enough that each character feels suitably real. Laugh out loud funny in one moment, ruminative on the state of the world the next, and very hard to put down.